Don't get me wrong, wands are great... but I have a hard time seeing any reason at all why a magic user would use a staff in the EE.
Wands- + Have a lower AP cost per basic attack
- + Have a ranged attack by default
- + Have a longer range than Staff of Magus (16.0 meters)
- + Can be dual-wielded
- + Dual-wielding lets you get the benefits of two weapons instead of one
- + Come with three charges of an extra spell
Staves- + Do very slightly more damage than a single wand
- + Staff of Magus now does more damage than the basic staff attack
- + Staff of Magus now costs 3 AP to use
- - Staff of Magus now has a 1 turn cooldown instead of 0
It seems to me that in their eagerness to promote the use of their brand new weapon type, they gave all the advantages to it and left the old magic-user weapon in the "old and busted" category. They even nerfed Staff of Magus further by adding a cooldown to it.
I don't think Larian will be eager to do a lot more balancing of it, either, but I have some thoughts.
- Somewhere I read something like wands are supposed to have a lower range than staves until you put points into them. That might have been an interesting downside. For example, with 0 Wand ability, wands have a range of 5.0 meters. Each point in the Wand skill boosts the maximum range by 2.0 meters, up to a max of 15 meters.
- Or maybe since wands get offensive spells attached to them, Staves could get defensive spells attached to them, with twice as many charges (because you can't dual-wield).
Your thoughts on Wands vs. Staves? Should there be a benefit for using Staves? Does it matter at all?
